Good deeds fly under the radar

Nick Swisher is growing his hair out for the charitable Women’s Cancer Research Fund, which provides wigs for those who have lost their hair because of medical conditions. And on Saturday night, Swisher was one of three A’s players who served as celebrity waiters for an annual Cystic Fibrosis Foundation fundraiser in Scottsdale. Huston Street and Joe Blanton also helped, and Eric Chavez, as he has for many years, bought a table for the event. NFL star Donovan McNabb was among the other celebrity severs.

Jason Giambi was the first A’s player to work as a celebrity waiter for the cystic fibrosis dinner, and he raised an enormous amount that year by taking off his shirt. Barry Zito did the same thing several years later, and also entertained the crowd with a song.

Many of the A’s players do charitable work that is not publicized because they don’t want to give the impression that they’re doing it for their own glory. Jason Kendall, for instance, was the subject of a moving story in the Los Angeles Times about the close friendship he’d struck up with a young cancer patient, but Kendall requested local reporters not to write similar features because that’s not why he was doing it. (I’m hoping this blog doesn’t count; it was in the LA Times already, after all.) Kendall, Chavez and Mark Kotsay are all community-minded and with little fanfare; Chavez, among other things, donates large blocks of tickets to local police and firefighters, and he also works closely with team chaplain Donnie Moore working with inner-city youth.

It’s commendable that players don’t want recognition for their good deeds, but there are some wonderful and inspiring stories that are going untold. Think about how much more Zito has raised for his Strikeouts for Troops foundation by making it public. Still, when baseball and other sports have image problems because of performance-enhancing substances and legal troubles, it’s nice to know that there are also a lot of professional athletes who are giving back, even if it goes under the radar.